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smackenzieAnd perhaps she was enjoying herself because she enjoyed the priest's company.
"Come dance with me," she said, standing abruptly and pulling him towards the floor where couples were lining up for a dance.
The priest was still not a very good dancer, although at least he could keep time, and as with everything else he was a quick study. But the steps of this particular dance were involved and complicated, and Maggie had to lead him the whole way through it. Neither of them minded, and when the musicians began a new tune, they both stayed on the floor for the next dance.
The evening wore on with more dancing and drinking and eating – there was no formal supper, but the king-in-exile had provided a lavish buffet and there were servants walking through all the rooms and outside bearing trays of glasses and small delicacies – and Maggie spoke to people she recognized, sometimes talking about politics and the possibility of helping the king-in-exile regain the throne, and sometimes gossiping, and sometimes telling stories of her pirate days. The priest was gracious and sociable and several times she caught him in a lie about his life before (and after) he met her, but she said nothing and when he winked at her to let her know that he knew what he was doing and that he knew she had caught him, she merely smiled at him.
It was a glorious ball, full of people in beautiful clothes and jewels, military dress, elaborate hats and hairstyles, unfamiliar costumes. There were musicians in the ballroom and outside under the tent and wandering through the house, there was an endless river of wine and exquisite dishes prepared with a skill and an imagination that Maggie had not seen since she was a captain in the Royal Navy. She swirled through the rooms in her green-and-blue dress and her pale blue silk shoes and her bright hair, drunk on the wealth on display and her own contribution to it. As the evening wore on and she spoke to more of her fellow exiles and the men and women she had known in better days – men and women she had served with or had known simply because the nobility was at times a very small club, and it was hard to not know your neighbors, and to not know of their neighbors – she became more and more convinced that the king-in-exile was happy here and had no wish to unseat the Usurper and take the throne back.
She was disappointed, or she would have been if she had not been so caught up in the memory of her former life and the days when she had no worries other than whether or not the wind would hold so she might set sail from the harbor when it was time to take the Black Lightning out to sea. Once she had been unconcerned about where and how she would eat, how she would feed and pay her crew, where she would live, how she could move about without worrying that someone would recognize her and turn her in for the bounty on her head. Once she had worn the uniform of an officer in the Royal Navy and she had loved her life and the things she was allowed to do. Once she had been able to move among the wealthy and powerful and the landed gentry as if it were her right to do so, because it was. Once she had been the equal of these men and women in every way.
And now, she had come to this city in a rowboat with a defrocked priest, because she had been afraid that her ship would attract too much attention. Now she was relieved that she could walk unmolested in the streets because there was no reward for her capture. Now she had to be fitted for a dress because she did not have one that was suitable, not with her and not on her ship and not anywhere. Now she was a pirate, a landless criminal, and the fact that this bit of information drew shocked gasps and titters and “What is it like?” curiosity from those she spoke to only served to demonstrate that in a way she was quite different from all the men and women here.
But in her heart, in a deep and secret place, she wanted to think that she was not. She wished to believe she was one of them, that she had always been and she always would be. And it was a relief and a comfort to fall back into that role, to be Lady Cleystone once again, to be Captain Lawton, holder of productive estates and woman of means.
Red Maggie was someone else, and for tonight, the Black Lightning was once again a commissioned navy vessel, proud frigate in the king's fleet.
And yet, for all her relief at being able to slip back into her old skin and mingle among people she knew, there was something wild and unrestrained about this ball that reminded her of the celebrations of pirates with new treasure in their holds and more gold in their pockets. As the night wore on and people lost some of their decorum, Maggie noticed more couples kissing on the dance floor in defiance of social custom, more people melting into dark corners, more women (and men) sitting on laps, more voices raised in belligerence and more swords drawn in drunken anger. Once the priest mentioned to her that when he was walking outside on the lawn, he came across a couple emerging from behind a decorative shrubbery, their clothes in disarray and bits of grass in the woman's hair, neither of them looking the least bit embarrassed.
Maggie only laughed at this and asked the priest if he would like to lie with her behind a flowering shrub, the air perfumed with exotic flowers and the grass soft and velvety underneath them. He looked scandalized and she only laughed some more.
“I am sorry, priest,” she finally told him. “I know you prefer to meet me in my room and tumble me into my bed.” And she kissed him quickly on the mouth and asked if he would like another glass of wine.
Eventually she lost sight of him, and by the end of the evening she had found some other naval officers – four men and another woman – and was sitting with them at one of the round tables that ringed the ballroom, all of them swapping stories of their commissions and their crews and their days as junior officers, telling rude jokes that would have been incredibly offensive in more polite company, and playing the kinds of drinking games that they had played as senior students in the Naval Academy, when the entire goal was to see who could drink whom under the table first, and who could best hold their wine. Maggie was astonishingly drunk but happier than she remembered ever being, and when the priest finally came to claim her and take her back to her room, she realized that she and the other female officer and only one of the men was still awake. Some of the musicians were still playing, there were a few couples dancing and a few more scattered among the tables and along the walls, but there were not a few heads down on the tables and it seemed that the ball was perhaps coming to a close. Maggie wondered vaguely if there were still people outside.
“It is near morning,” the priest told her, sounding not especially sober himself. “Come to bed.” He laid a hand on her shoulder and she obediently pushed herself away from the table and stood, swayed, lost her balance, and grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself. The other two officers at the table laughed, and she did as well. She wished them a good night – or was it morning? - and took the priest's arm to keep from falling over, and let him guide her out of the ballroom and up the stairs and back to her own bed.
They got lost twice but with the guidance of several infinitely patient servants and one older gentleman in an old military uniform finally managed to find the right room. Maggie fumbled with the knob, pushed the door open, saw the bed, and unsteadily kicked off her shoes on her way across the floor to it. She reached for the pillow and fell headfirst onto the mattress. She wanted the priest but she wanted to sleep, and she had perhaps drunk too much to be any good in bed. She mumbled her apologies into the pillow, and then she was unconscious.
She woke once, briefly, and was confused as to where she was, why she was wearing the shift she had worn under her corset and her dress, and who was in bed with her. And then her head cleared enough for her to remember that she was in a guest room in the king-in-exile's city house, she had gone to his ball, and it was the priest's warm comforting length stretched out against her back. She did not remember undressing. He must have taken off all her clothes for her. Her throat was dry, her tongue felt swollen inside her mouth, her head was pounding, and she was tired to her bones. She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
When she woke again it was to daylight brightening the room – the curtains were drawn but they were not opaque, and the room was lighter than it had been when she went to bed. The priest was still lying next to her, his arm flung across her waist, his breath warm and damp against her neck. She gingerly pushed his arm away, sat up, and immediately leaned over to vomit into the chamber pot on the floor. (“Leaned over” might have been too kind – she in fact flopped over onto her stomach with her head hanging over the side of the bed.)
She tried to remember the last time she had drunk too much to take advantage of a pretty man in her bed, and could not. She knew that last night she had discussed the king-in-exile retaking the throne, she knew she had told people that she had a navy at her command, sixty ships armed to the top decks and nearly seven thousand fighting men and women on them. She knew she had come to a conclusion about the king-in-exile, but now she could not remember what. She realized there were a number of things about the previous evening that she could not remember.
Oh Maggie, she thought, you are so stupid.
But she did remember how much she had enjoyed herself, how at home she felt in her gorgeous dress and new shoes and the jeweled pins in her hair. She remembered the priest seemed to be enjoying himself as well.
She rearranged herself on the mattress, pulled his arm across her waist again, and laced their fingers together. Perhaps she did love him after all. He was a good man, he was no longer lost, and he was good to her.
She fell asleep again.
She did not wake until after midday, this time because the priest had woken and she heard him moving about her room.
“Good morning,” he said to her, when he turned to see her watching him.
“Is it still morning?” she asked.
“No. How are you feeling?”
“Like a woman who drank far more than she should have. Death would be kind to me. And yourself?”
“I will be better after a wash. I have been told there are public bathing houses in this city and I think a walk in the fresh air will help clear my head. Do you wish to join me? I would like it if you did.”
“I do not know if I can move myself out of bed.” She sat up carefully, just as carefully swung her legs over the side of the bed, and tried to stand. The floor did not tilt and she did not feel quite as lightheaded as she had expected, but her head throbbed and she did not think she would be best served by the bright sun.
The priest finished buttoning up his breeches and held out his hand to Maggie. She just looked at it.
“You do not look very steady on your feet,” the priest explained.
“I do not need your help dressing.” She thought for a moment. “You took my clothes off last night, did you not?” She touched her hair. The elaborately arranged poofs and knots and curls were falling down, pins no doubt tangled in the mess. “Do not tell me what my hair looks like. Will you bring me a brush?”
He rummaged through the things on the dressing table and brought her a brush, and she sat back on the bed to attempt to fix her hair. He watched as she pulled at it and dug her fingers into the mess and retrieved a few pins and tried to pull the brush through it. She swore and realized the priest was laughing at her.
“Do not laugh at me, priest,” she muttered. “I am a mess. I cannot go out like this, even to a bathhouse.”
“I do apologize. But you are sitting in your shift yanking at your hair as if it is the most important thing you could be doing. Do you not wish to dress first?”
“No, I do not. Either leave me be or if you must talk, say something nice.”
He just watched as she fought with her hair, until eventually she deemed it acceptable and pulled her shift off so she could clothe herself in shirt and waistcoat and breeches. She felt less like Margaret, Lady Cleystone, this afternoon and more like Red Maggie, pirate captain. Lady Cleystone had never fallen asleep in her clothes without bothering a maid to take down her hair, and Red Maggie had drunk too much and woken up next to men whose names she could not immediately remember.
Besides, her conversations of the night before were returning to her, and she would have to be Red Maggie once again in order to lead her pirate navy. She did not think Lady Cleystone, or even Captain Lawton of the Royal Navy, could command seven thousand pirates and rain blood and death and vengeance down upon the Usurper's head. It would take a pirate's cunning and a pirate's ruthlessness to accomplish this goal.
And so she went out into the city in her pirate's clothes, her red coat and her captain's hat, the priest walking beside her to one of the nicer public bathhouses. There were several placed in neighborhoods around the city, most of them to provide for the middle and lower classes who could not afford – or did not have the space for – their own bathing facilities. But one or two of the more exclusive ones had become places for the upper classes, where merchants and military officers and the nobility would meet to conduct business and gossip and relax away from the bustle and commotion of their lives and families. The priest was not especially comfortable in such a place, but Maggie allowed herself to become Lady Cleystone for just an hour, and bathed and recovered from her evening as she listened to the murmued gossip around her, the women discussing the baron's ball of the night before, or talking about their friends and neighbors, or making social plans and arranging marriages and organizing their children's futures.
It was not a life she knew any more, but for an hour it was pleasant to pretend.
Afterwards Maggie and the priest went to a cafe and sat by the window and drank cold drinks and ate small snacks, and she told him that she had been thinking and she did not believe the king-in-exile wished to take back his throne.
“I do not know what to do,” she confessed, her voice quiet in the calm of the cafe. “I built my navy for him. I have come here for him. I have made all my plans around him, that one day he might ride against the Usurper and regain the throne that should be his. I have always believed that he wanted it back, that he would take it again if he could. And now... he does not want it. He prefers his life here, his balls and his friends and his barony.”
“But you still have your navy,” the priest reminded her. “In three months your captains will be here awaiting your orders. They will be full of blood and fire and you have only to point them in the right direction and let them go as if from a slingshot. They spit and they swore to follow you, Maggie. Whatever else your king may wish, you have the strength to command the captains of sixty pirate ships.”
“But what will I do with them?” She looked him in the eyes. She felt lost, now that she had time to remember the conversations and discussions of earlier, now that she had time to arrange them in her head and recount what everyone had said to her and how they had said it. “I brought them together to set against the Usurper in service of the king-in-exile, and he does not want them. He is not the man I had thought he was. He is... he is not weak, I do not think, but he has grown complacent. He does not have the ambition he once had.” She sipped her drink. It was chilled and fruity and felt good in her throat. “He is – I do not think he is a man I could follow. He is not the king I remember.”
The priest reached across the table and took her hand. She looked down at it. She could not believe she was was saying these things in a public place. This was the kind of conversation she and the priest had always had under cover of darkness, or in bed, at times and in places they had privacy for their deepest thoughts and their fears. It was a confessional conversation, and one did not make one's confession in public.
But she was a pirate captain, was she not? She had heard someone call her a pirate queen. And what were pirates, if not all the things that decent law-abiding people were not? Pirates did not need the privacy of a booth for their confessions. And she did not want to stop this conversation, now that she had started it.
“Last night – I think it was last night – I told you that I thought of you as my priest now, and you asked if you should hear my confession,” she said thoughtfully. She had not looked up. She did not think she could see his face, the compassion and understanding she knew were there. “This is my confession, priest: I do not know what to do. For so long I had a goal and I moved towards it like a ship towards the horizon. And now that goal is no more, and I am - “
“You are lost,” he said softly. “As I was, when I had my faith but not my church, when I wanted to serve God but could not use the structure to do so that I had learned. And you told me I would have to find my own path to Him. You said I could find it on my own, and I have. You will do the same – you will find your own way. You still have your navy and your vengeance. The Usurper still sits on her throne.”
“But if I could unseat her, who would take her place? I do not want to be queen. I do not want to put a pirate captain on the throne.”
“But you may make her life difficult enough that another potential ruler might rise up against her. The people might yet find another champion. And there is another thing.” She realized he had been stroking her hand, and now she looked up at him. His face was very serious, but it seemed there might still be a grin lurking in the corners of his mouth and in his eyes. “You are Red Maggie, captain of the pirate ship Black Lightning. You raid and you pillage and you capture and sink the ships of those who would move against you. Men and women are afraid of you.”
“Not the men and women here. They think I am amusing and they would vicariously live my life, robbing and plundering without consequence. They think it a great adventure, what I do. They do not have the imagination or the experience to fear me.”
“And that is because you have never chased their ships. You have never tried to steal their livelihood. But the Usurper? The people of Tanne? They are afraid of you. Use it, Maggie. Use it against the woman who stole your land and your title and sent you into exile.”
That made her smile, that her kind, gentle priest, the man who wished only to serve his god and her, who had told her that he did not approve of the things that she had done to make her reputation such that pirate captains would follow her, that he would tell her to return to all that was terrifying about piracy, to bring her swords and her cannon to bear against the Usurper, to bring blood and violence to the country of her birth in vengeance for what was taken from her.
“Are you laughing at me?” the priest asked, but he said it without anger. He was smiling too. “You told me once you were still in your heart a pirate. I watched you last night in your ballgown and with all those jewels in your hair, talking and laughing with aristocrats as if you belonged among them. And perhaps for one night you did. But I have seen you dispatch wounded sailors and I have seen you lead raids and I have seen you sink ships and keep their flags for trophies, and I know you to be strong and determined and powerful and frightening. What should you do? The same thing you were always going to do. You would have done it for your king. Now do it for yourself. Sail your navy into the Usurper's harbor and sink her ships at anchor. Make her life hell.”
She had to laugh at the intensity of his voice.
“I love you, priest,” she said, and was amazed to see his face brighten and flush. “Are you blushing?”
“Now you are laughing at me,” he mumbled.
“Of course I am. You make me happy.” She closed both her hands around his. “Sometimes you are very wise. I have wanted to unseat the Usurper as repayment for all she took from me, as well as for the king-in-exile's throne. I wanted my land back, my title, my name. Despite what they call me here I am no longer Lady Cleystone, and have not been for years. The great hall is no longer mine. I have wanted it back for so long that I have never thought I could have any other goal.”
“You may still take it. Hold the Usurper's fleet hostage for your name and your estate.”
“Do you realize that you refer to her as I do, even though she has taken nothing from you and has not unseated the ruler you obeyed?”
“I do not know what else to call her.”
“And yet the king-in-exile is 'your king'. He could have been yours too, if you chose to sail with me and I put him back on the throne.”
“I have but one king, Maggie.” He glanced up at the ceiling, indicating that he only served his god and no earthly ruler. She merely shrugged. It did not matter. The Usurper would remain on the throne. The king-in-exile did not want it, and Maggie could not win it for him because he would not take it.
“I have three months,” she said, “and then we will sail for the country that used to be mine, and we will harry the Usurper's merchant ships and destroy her navy. I will do it for myself and for all the other men and women she robbed and sent away, and if the king-in-exile wishes to remain here in his adopted country with his barony and his frivolous friends, I will not change his mind.”
But she did tell him of her plans, that she would take her navy to challenge the Usurper and that she would have her vengeance for the loss of her title and her estates and her very name, and the king-in-exile was absolved of any connection he might have had with her. She would not do it for him, she said, nor would she try to put him back on the throne, as it was clear that he did not want her to. She thanked him for his hospitality and the kindness he had shown to her and the priest, and she promised that her pirates would leave the ships of his adopted country be.
“We have but one target,” she said. “It has been my target for years and I am not going to give it up.”
“I suppose I should wish you luck,” the king-in-exile mused. “But I do not know if in good conscience I can. But it has been a pleasure to see you and speak with you, and you are always welcome in my house as one of my old supporters.”
“Thank you. It has been a pleasure to stay here as your guest. But I must go. I have things to do and plans to make and money of my own to raise.”
He took her hand and kissed it, and one of his servants showed her out.
She sent word to the Black Lightning that she was returning and that while the king-in-exile did not want her help her plans had not changed, and she sent a challenge to the Usurper to meet her in three months and they would see whose navy was stronger and who commanded more power.
The Usurper did not reply. Maggie had not expected her to.
And so it came to pass that Red Maggie, captain of the Black Lightning and commander of the only successful pirate navy to sail the southern seas, brought her ships north to sail against the woman who had taken her country by force and sent her into exile. Maggie stood on the poop deck of her ship, high where her crew could see her, in her red coat and her black hat with its shiny pheasant feathers, her red hair blowing around her shoulders in the wind and her hand on her sword, and she counted the Usurper's ships arrayed against her, and she counted the ships at her back, and she raised her sword and she screamed commands and the rigging creaked as the wind caught the Black Lightning's sails and she moved forward to fulfill her destiny.
She was not doing it for the king-in-exile. She knew that in her heart she never had been. This was for her and her ship and all the things she had lost, even as she knew that in a way she had lost nothing, and this attack, this culmination of her hard work, this reason for all the blood on her blade – this was, finally, the proof of who she was and what she had become.
She was Red Maggie Lawton, pirate queen, and she was strong and fierce and terrible, and the sight of her flag was enough to make hardened sailors piss themselves in terror. She would have the Usurper's navy and she would loot the Usurper's treasury and she would make such a name for herself that grown men and women would tremble in fear. No jail could hold her. Death could not take her. She led her sixty pirate ships and her seven thousand men and women into battle, and she knew they would be victorious.
She would send every single one of the Usurper's ships to the bottom of the sea, and she would laugh as the woman begged for mercy.
She had been two women, her heart divided between two roles – the pirate with a pirate's ruthless acquisitive soul, and the landed aristocrat and proud officer of the Royal Navy. But she could not be both. And she finally knew which one she really was, and perhaps which one she was always destined to be.
She was a pirate captain, landless and proud, and her mandate was to wreak havoc and sow chaos, to take what she and her crew wanted, to sail the seas as free and unfettered as the birds in the sky and the fish in the deep, to answer to no one and nothing but her own desires.
She had made her name. Now she would use the power that it had brought her. Lady Cleystone was gone, but Red Maggie would live forever.
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"Come dance with me," she said, standing abruptly and pulling him towards the floor where couples were lining up for a dance.
The priest was still not a very good dancer, although at least he could keep time, and as with everything else he was a quick study. But the steps of this particular dance were involved and complicated, and Maggie had to lead him the whole way through it. Neither of them minded, and when the musicians began a new tune, they both stayed on the floor for the next dance.
The evening wore on with more dancing and drinking and eating – there was no formal supper, but the king-in-exile had provided a lavish buffet and there were servants walking through all the rooms and outside bearing trays of glasses and small delicacies – and Maggie spoke to people she recognized, sometimes talking about politics and the possibility of helping the king-in-exile regain the throne, and sometimes gossiping, and sometimes telling stories of her pirate days. The priest was gracious and sociable and several times she caught him in a lie about his life before (and after) he met her, but she said nothing and when he winked at her to let her know that he knew what he was doing and that he knew she had caught him, she merely smiled at him.
It was a glorious ball, full of people in beautiful clothes and jewels, military dress, elaborate hats and hairstyles, unfamiliar costumes. There were musicians in the ballroom and outside under the tent and wandering through the house, there was an endless river of wine and exquisite dishes prepared with a skill and an imagination that Maggie had not seen since she was a captain in the Royal Navy. She swirled through the rooms in her green-and-blue dress and her pale blue silk shoes and her bright hair, drunk on the wealth on display and her own contribution to it. As the evening wore on and she spoke to more of her fellow exiles and the men and women she had known in better days – men and women she had served with or had known simply because the nobility was at times a very small club, and it was hard to not know your neighbors, and to not know of their neighbors – she became more and more convinced that the king-in-exile was happy here and had no wish to unseat the Usurper and take the throne back.
She was disappointed, or she would have been if she had not been so caught up in the memory of her former life and the days when she had no worries other than whether or not the wind would hold so she might set sail from the harbor when it was time to take the Black Lightning out to sea. Once she had been unconcerned about where and how she would eat, how she would feed and pay her crew, where she would live, how she could move about without worrying that someone would recognize her and turn her in for the bounty on her head. Once she had worn the uniform of an officer in the Royal Navy and she had loved her life and the things she was allowed to do. Once she had been able to move among the wealthy and powerful and the landed gentry as if it were her right to do so, because it was. Once she had been the equal of these men and women in every way.
And now, she had come to this city in a rowboat with a defrocked priest, because she had been afraid that her ship would attract too much attention. Now she was relieved that she could walk unmolested in the streets because there was no reward for her capture. Now she had to be fitted for a dress because she did not have one that was suitable, not with her and not on her ship and not anywhere. Now she was a pirate, a landless criminal, and the fact that this bit of information drew shocked gasps and titters and “What is it like?” curiosity from those she spoke to only served to demonstrate that in a way she was quite different from all the men and women here.
But in her heart, in a deep and secret place, she wanted to think that she was not. She wished to believe she was one of them, that she had always been and she always would be. And it was a relief and a comfort to fall back into that role, to be Lady Cleystone once again, to be Captain Lawton, holder of productive estates and woman of means.
Red Maggie was someone else, and for tonight, the Black Lightning was once again a commissioned navy vessel, proud frigate in the king's fleet.
And yet, for all her relief at being able to slip back into her old skin and mingle among people she knew, there was something wild and unrestrained about this ball that reminded her of the celebrations of pirates with new treasure in their holds and more gold in their pockets. As the night wore on and people lost some of their decorum, Maggie noticed more couples kissing on the dance floor in defiance of social custom, more people melting into dark corners, more women (and men) sitting on laps, more voices raised in belligerence and more swords drawn in drunken anger. Once the priest mentioned to her that when he was walking outside on the lawn, he came across a couple emerging from behind a decorative shrubbery, their clothes in disarray and bits of grass in the woman's hair, neither of them looking the least bit embarrassed.
Maggie only laughed at this and asked the priest if he would like to lie with her behind a flowering shrub, the air perfumed with exotic flowers and the grass soft and velvety underneath them. He looked scandalized and she only laughed some more.
“I am sorry, priest,” she finally told him. “I know you prefer to meet me in my room and tumble me into my bed.” And she kissed him quickly on the mouth and asked if he would like another glass of wine.
Eventually she lost sight of him, and by the end of the evening she had found some other naval officers – four men and another woman – and was sitting with them at one of the round tables that ringed the ballroom, all of them swapping stories of their commissions and their crews and their days as junior officers, telling rude jokes that would have been incredibly offensive in more polite company, and playing the kinds of drinking games that they had played as senior students in the Naval Academy, when the entire goal was to see who could drink whom under the table first, and who could best hold their wine. Maggie was astonishingly drunk but happier than she remembered ever being, and when the priest finally came to claim her and take her back to her room, she realized that she and the other female officer and only one of the men was still awake. Some of the musicians were still playing, there were a few couples dancing and a few more scattered among the tables and along the walls, but there were not a few heads down on the tables and it seemed that the ball was perhaps coming to a close. Maggie wondered vaguely if there were still people outside.
“It is near morning,” the priest told her, sounding not especially sober himself. “Come to bed.” He laid a hand on her shoulder and she obediently pushed herself away from the table and stood, swayed, lost her balance, and grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself. The other two officers at the table laughed, and she did as well. She wished them a good night – or was it morning? - and took the priest's arm to keep from falling over, and let him guide her out of the ballroom and up the stairs and back to her own bed.
They got lost twice but with the guidance of several infinitely patient servants and one older gentleman in an old military uniform finally managed to find the right room. Maggie fumbled with the knob, pushed the door open, saw the bed, and unsteadily kicked off her shoes on her way across the floor to it. She reached for the pillow and fell headfirst onto the mattress. She wanted the priest but she wanted to sleep, and she had perhaps drunk too much to be any good in bed. She mumbled her apologies into the pillow, and then she was unconscious.
She woke once, briefly, and was confused as to where she was, why she was wearing the shift she had worn under her corset and her dress, and who was in bed with her. And then her head cleared enough for her to remember that she was in a guest room in the king-in-exile's city house, she had gone to his ball, and it was the priest's warm comforting length stretched out against her back. She did not remember undressing. He must have taken off all her clothes for her. Her throat was dry, her tongue felt swollen inside her mouth, her head was pounding, and she was tired to her bones. She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
When she woke again it was to daylight brightening the room – the curtains were drawn but they were not opaque, and the room was lighter than it had been when she went to bed. The priest was still lying next to her, his arm flung across her waist, his breath warm and damp against her neck. She gingerly pushed his arm away, sat up, and immediately leaned over to vomit into the chamber pot on the floor. (“Leaned over” might have been too kind – she in fact flopped over onto her stomach with her head hanging over the side of the bed.)
She tried to remember the last time she had drunk too much to take advantage of a pretty man in her bed, and could not. She knew that last night she had discussed the king-in-exile retaking the throne, she knew she had told people that she had a navy at her command, sixty ships armed to the top decks and nearly seven thousand fighting men and women on them. She knew she had come to a conclusion about the king-in-exile, but now she could not remember what. She realized there were a number of things about the previous evening that she could not remember.
Oh Maggie, she thought, you are so stupid.
But she did remember how much she had enjoyed herself, how at home she felt in her gorgeous dress and new shoes and the jeweled pins in her hair. She remembered the priest seemed to be enjoying himself as well.
She rearranged herself on the mattress, pulled his arm across her waist again, and laced their fingers together. Perhaps she did love him after all. He was a good man, he was no longer lost, and he was good to her.
She fell asleep again.
She did not wake until after midday, this time because the priest had woken and she heard him moving about her room.
“Good morning,” he said to her, when he turned to see her watching him.
“Is it still morning?” she asked.
“No. How are you feeling?”
“Like a woman who drank far more than she should have. Death would be kind to me. And yourself?”
“I will be better after a wash. I have been told there are public bathing houses in this city and I think a walk in the fresh air will help clear my head. Do you wish to join me? I would like it if you did.”
“I do not know if I can move myself out of bed.” She sat up carefully, just as carefully swung her legs over the side of the bed, and tried to stand. The floor did not tilt and she did not feel quite as lightheaded as she had expected, but her head throbbed and she did not think she would be best served by the bright sun.
The priest finished buttoning up his breeches and held out his hand to Maggie. She just looked at it.
“You do not look very steady on your feet,” the priest explained.
“I do not need your help dressing.” She thought for a moment. “You took my clothes off last night, did you not?” She touched her hair. The elaborately arranged poofs and knots and curls were falling down, pins no doubt tangled in the mess. “Do not tell me what my hair looks like. Will you bring me a brush?”
He rummaged through the things on the dressing table and brought her a brush, and she sat back on the bed to attempt to fix her hair. He watched as she pulled at it and dug her fingers into the mess and retrieved a few pins and tried to pull the brush through it. She swore and realized the priest was laughing at her.
“Do not laugh at me, priest,” she muttered. “I am a mess. I cannot go out like this, even to a bathhouse.”
“I do apologize. But you are sitting in your shift yanking at your hair as if it is the most important thing you could be doing. Do you not wish to dress first?”
“No, I do not. Either leave me be or if you must talk, say something nice.”
He just watched as she fought with her hair, until eventually she deemed it acceptable and pulled her shift off so she could clothe herself in shirt and waistcoat and breeches. She felt less like Margaret, Lady Cleystone, this afternoon and more like Red Maggie, pirate captain. Lady Cleystone had never fallen asleep in her clothes without bothering a maid to take down her hair, and Red Maggie had drunk too much and woken up next to men whose names she could not immediately remember.
Besides, her conversations of the night before were returning to her, and she would have to be Red Maggie once again in order to lead her pirate navy. She did not think Lady Cleystone, or even Captain Lawton of the Royal Navy, could command seven thousand pirates and rain blood and death and vengeance down upon the Usurper's head. It would take a pirate's cunning and a pirate's ruthlessness to accomplish this goal.
And so she went out into the city in her pirate's clothes, her red coat and her captain's hat, the priest walking beside her to one of the nicer public bathhouses. There were several placed in neighborhoods around the city, most of them to provide for the middle and lower classes who could not afford – or did not have the space for – their own bathing facilities. But one or two of the more exclusive ones had become places for the upper classes, where merchants and military officers and the nobility would meet to conduct business and gossip and relax away from the bustle and commotion of their lives and families. The priest was not especially comfortable in such a place, but Maggie allowed herself to become Lady Cleystone for just an hour, and bathed and recovered from her evening as she listened to the murmued gossip around her, the women discussing the baron's ball of the night before, or talking about their friends and neighbors, or making social plans and arranging marriages and organizing their children's futures.
It was not a life she knew any more, but for an hour it was pleasant to pretend.
Afterwards Maggie and the priest went to a cafe and sat by the window and drank cold drinks and ate small snacks, and she told him that she had been thinking and she did not believe the king-in-exile wished to take back his throne.
“I do not know what to do,” she confessed, her voice quiet in the calm of the cafe. “I built my navy for him. I have come here for him. I have made all my plans around him, that one day he might ride against the Usurper and regain the throne that should be his. I have always believed that he wanted it back, that he would take it again if he could. And now... he does not want it. He prefers his life here, his balls and his friends and his barony.”
“But you still have your navy,” the priest reminded her. “In three months your captains will be here awaiting your orders. They will be full of blood and fire and you have only to point them in the right direction and let them go as if from a slingshot. They spit and they swore to follow you, Maggie. Whatever else your king may wish, you have the strength to command the captains of sixty pirate ships.”
“But what will I do with them?” She looked him in the eyes. She felt lost, now that she had time to remember the conversations and discussions of earlier, now that she had time to arrange them in her head and recount what everyone had said to her and how they had said it. “I brought them together to set against the Usurper in service of the king-in-exile, and he does not want them. He is not the man I had thought he was. He is... he is not weak, I do not think, but he has grown complacent. He does not have the ambition he once had.” She sipped her drink. It was chilled and fruity and felt good in her throat. “He is – I do not think he is a man I could follow. He is not the king I remember.”
The priest reached across the table and took her hand. She looked down at it. She could not believe she was was saying these things in a public place. This was the kind of conversation she and the priest had always had under cover of darkness, or in bed, at times and in places they had privacy for their deepest thoughts and their fears. It was a confessional conversation, and one did not make one's confession in public.
But she was a pirate captain, was she not? She had heard someone call her a pirate queen. And what were pirates, if not all the things that decent law-abiding people were not? Pirates did not need the privacy of a booth for their confessions. And she did not want to stop this conversation, now that she had started it.
“Last night – I think it was last night – I told you that I thought of you as my priest now, and you asked if you should hear my confession,” she said thoughtfully. She had not looked up. She did not think she could see his face, the compassion and understanding she knew were there. “This is my confession, priest: I do not know what to do. For so long I had a goal and I moved towards it like a ship towards the horizon. And now that goal is no more, and I am - “
“You are lost,” he said softly. “As I was, when I had my faith but not my church, when I wanted to serve God but could not use the structure to do so that I had learned. And you told me I would have to find my own path to Him. You said I could find it on my own, and I have. You will do the same – you will find your own way. You still have your navy and your vengeance. The Usurper still sits on her throne.”
“But if I could unseat her, who would take her place? I do not want to be queen. I do not want to put a pirate captain on the throne.”
“But you may make her life difficult enough that another potential ruler might rise up against her. The people might yet find another champion. And there is another thing.” She realized he had been stroking her hand, and now she looked up at him. His face was very serious, but it seemed there might still be a grin lurking in the corners of his mouth and in his eyes. “You are Red Maggie, captain of the pirate ship Black Lightning. You raid and you pillage and you capture and sink the ships of those who would move against you. Men and women are afraid of you.”
“Not the men and women here. They think I am amusing and they would vicariously live my life, robbing and plundering without consequence. They think it a great adventure, what I do. They do not have the imagination or the experience to fear me.”
“And that is because you have never chased their ships. You have never tried to steal their livelihood. But the Usurper? The people of Tanne? They are afraid of you. Use it, Maggie. Use it against the woman who stole your land and your title and sent you into exile.”
That made her smile, that her kind, gentle priest, the man who wished only to serve his god and her, who had told her that he did not approve of the things that she had done to make her reputation such that pirate captains would follow her, that he would tell her to return to all that was terrifying about piracy, to bring her swords and her cannon to bear against the Usurper, to bring blood and violence to the country of her birth in vengeance for what was taken from her.
“Are you laughing at me?” the priest asked, but he said it without anger. He was smiling too. “You told me once you were still in your heart a pirate. I watched you last night in your ballgown and with all those jewels in your hair, talking and laughing with aristocrats as if you belonged among them. And perhaps for one night you did. But I have seen you dispatch wounded sailors and I have seen you lead raids and I have seen you sink ships and keep their flags for trophies, and I know you to be strong and determined and powerful and frightening. What should you do? The same thing you were always going to do. You would have done it for your king. Now do it for yourself. Sail your navy into the Usurper's harbor and sink her ships at anchor. Make her life hell.”
She had to laugh at the intensity of his voice.
“I love you, priest,” she said, and was amazed to see his face brighten and flush. “Are you blushing?”
“Now you are laughing at me,” he mumbled.
“Of course I am. You make me happy.” She closed both her hands around his. “Sometimes you are very wise. I have wanted to unseat the Usurper as repayment for all she took from me, as well as for the king-in-exile's throne. I wanted my land back, my title, my name. Despite what they call me here I am no longer Lady Cleystone, and have not been for years. The great hall is no longer mine. I have wanted it back for so long that I have never thought I could have any other goal.”
“You may still take it. Hold the Usurper's fleet hostage for your name and your estate.”
“Do you realize that you refer to her as I do, even though she has taken nothing from you and has not unseated the ruler you obeyed?”
“I do not know what else to call her.”
“And yet the king-in-exile is 'your king'. He could have been yours too, if you chose to sail with me and I put him back on the throne.”
“I have but one king, Maggie.” He glanced up at the ceiling, indicating that he only served his god and no earthly ruler. She merely shrugged. It did not matter. The Usurper would remain on the throne. The king-in-exile did not want it, and Maggie could not win it for him because he would not take it.
“I have three months,” she said, “and then we will sail for the country that used to be mine, and we will harry the Usurper's merchant ships and destroy her navy. I will do it for myself and for all the other men and women she robbed and sent away, and if the king-in-exile wishes to remain here in his adopted country with his barony and his frivolous friends, I will not change his mind.”
But she did tell him of her plans, that she would take her navy to challenge the Usurper and that she would have her vengeance for the loss of her title and her estates and her very name, and the king-in-exile was absolved of any connection he might have had with her. She would not do it for him, she said, nor would she try to put him back on the throne, as it was clear that he did not want her to. She thanked him for his hospitality and the kindness he had shown to her and the priest, and she promised that her pirates would leave the ships of his adopted country be.
“We have but one target,” she said. “It has been my target for years and I am not going to give it up.”
“I suppose I should wish you luck,” the king-in-exile mused. “But I do not know if in good conscience I can. But it has been a pleasure to see you and speak with you, and you are always welcome in my house as one of my old supporters.”
“Thank you. It has been a pleasure to stay here as your guest. But I must go. I have things to do and plans to make and money of my own to raise.”
He took her hand and kissed it, and one of his servants showed her out.
She sent word to the Black Lightning that she was returning and that while the king-in-exile did not want her help her plans had not changed, and she sent a challenge to the Usurper to meet her in three months and they would see whose navy was stronger and who commanded more power.
The Usurper did not reply. Maggie had not expected her to.
And so it came to pass that Red Maggie, captain of the Black Lightning and commander of the only successful pirate navy to sail the southern seas, brought her ships north to sail against the woman who had taken her country by force and sent her into exile. Maggie stood on the poop deck of her ship, high where her crew could see her, in her red coat and her black hat with its shiny pheasant feathers, her red hair blowing around her shoulders in the wind and her hand on her sword, and she counted the Usurper's ships arrayed against her, and she counted the ships at her back, and she raised her sword and she screamed commands and the rigging creaked as the wind caught the Black Lightning's sails and she moved forward to fulfill her destiny.
She was not doing it for the king-in-exile. She knew that in her heart she never had been. This was for her and her ship and all the things she had lost, even as she knew that in a way she had lost nothing, and this attack, this culmination of her hard work, this reason for all the blood on her blade – this was, finally, the proof of who she was and what she had become.
She was Red Maggie Lawton, pirate queen, and she was strong and fierce and terrible, and the sight of her flag was enough to make hardened sailors piss themselves in terror. She would have the Usurper's navy and she would loot the Usurper's treasury and she would make such a name for herself that grown men and women would tremble in fear. No jail could hold her. Death could not take her. She led her sixty pirate ships and her seven thousand men and women into battle, and she knew they would be victorious.
She would send every single one of the Usurper's ships to the bottom of the sea, and she would laugh as the woman begged for mercy.
She had been two women, her heart divided between two roles – the pirate with a pirate's ruthless acquisitive soul, and the landed aristocrat and proud officer of the Royal Navy. But she could not be both. And she finally knew which one she really was, and perhaps which one she was always destined to be.
She was a pirate captain, landless and proud, and her mandate was to wreak havoc and sow chaos, to take what she and her crew wanted, to sail the seas as free and unfettered as the birds in the sky and the fish in the deep, to answer to no one and nothing but her own desires.
She had made her name. Now she would use the power that it had brought her. Lady Cleystone was gone, but Red Maggie would live forever.
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